Development of a scenario builder tool for scaffolded virtual patients

Abstract

Simulation training using virtual patients can provide many benefits for nursing and medical students in learning patient interaction skills, especially since virtual patients can represent a wide range of patient scenarios and demographics that are not typically represented through roleplay or clinical rotations. However, creation of a single virtual patient scenario may take six months or more, so it is difficult to provide many unique scenarios during the course of a nurse's education. In this work, I propose the user-centered design, creation, and evaluation of a scenario-builder tool to enable nursing faculty to create their own scenarios, reducing development costs.